iLife forum: iPhoto 11 uncooperative when trying to delete photos

Ok... I have all of the photos I want to keep in a set of albums, I want to delete all of the photos in iPhoto11 that are not in an album. Then, (based on a tip about how to do this in iPhoto9) I made a smart album with the perimeters that any photo not in an album already would be in this one. When I try to take these delete these photos from this album it acts as if I did not delete them at all (instead of what I guessed it would do, deleting them from the album but not Photos library). All of these attempts yielded the result of iPhoto acting as if I did nothing: pressing the delete button when they are selected, right clicking sending to trash, dragging to iphoto trash, dragging to trash app, command+delete, option+delete, control+delete (the last 3 supposedly deleting the photos from album and Photos library in iPhoto9). Any idea how to delete the photos in the album from Photos library -- or any idea at all how to delete all the photos in iphoto11 photos library that are not in any albums. - - - Many thanks!

If the photo is in Smart Album, it is not in any other album AND is in the Library.Deleting that photo from the Smart Album does nothing because by doing so it becomes a photo that matches the criteria that you set up for the Smart Album and so it cannot be deleted!

I have been playing with this for a little while and find that I cannot delete any pictures from a Smart Album in iPhoto11, probably for the same reason.

the option I see if for you to use the smart album, copy the photo name from the info tab, to locate the pictures in the Library and delete from there.

Figured it out! One solution along these lines - Go to the smart album, select all give them all a rating that your other photos do not have 1 for example (why would you have any photos with a rating of one!?). Then you can go to photo library, sort by rating, find all of the One Ratings and delete directly from Photos library.

When you use only the Delete key in an album you're only removing the photos from the album.

Deleting Photos from an iPhoto Library:

1 - from the Event or Photos mode: select the photo(s) and use the Delete key to move the photos to the trash bin. Then empty the iPhoto Trash bin

2 - from an album, smart album, book, slideshow, card, etc.: select the photo(s) and use the key combination of Command+Option+Delete to move the photos to the trash bin. Then empty the trash bin as above

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